Providing a much-needed check on mythopoeic archaeological inference, but also on occasion commenting on the important discoveries of the day. Every effort is made to keep the invective to a dull roar. Best plug your ears!

Wednesday, 8 February 2012

Haft-Way There!

I don't recall why I would have 'unpublished' this. Nevertheless, it's back now. Published on February 8, 2012.Of late you've seen two really good examples of how archaeologists can 'get it wrong.' One was Pawlik and Thissen's claim from Inden-Altdorf, in Germany, in which I questioned their empirical observations and conclusions. The other you saw just yesterday, in which it appears that a tar-encased flake was very probably recovered in (at best) a mixed depositional context, which would lead to an overestimate of its age. Let's see... as I understand it, there were four articles crucial to the claim that the Neanderthals engineered birch tar as a hafting mastic--no small feat, even for people like you and me. [Thanks again to Marco Langbroek and Iain Davidson for bringing me up to date on that literature, albeit for different reasons.] That leaves only two. One is a real beauty: an argument, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.

This tiny flake fragment (proximal-distal length a mere 14 mm) is interpreted as part of 'A Levallois point embedded in the vertebra of a wild ass (Equus africanus): hafting, projectiles and Mousterian hunting weapons,' by Boëda, Geneste andGriggo (Antiquity 73:394-402, 1999).

The other is (near enough) what naughty kids get for Christmas. It's two small lumps of birch tar from a lignite quarry near Königsaue, Landkreis Aschersleben-Staßurt (Germany).

NO worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.Comforter, where, where is your comforting?Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chiefWoe, world-sorrow; on an age-old anvil wince and sing—Then lull, then leave off. Fury had shrieked ‘No ling-ering! Let me be fell: force I must be brief’.

O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fallFrightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheapMay who ne’er hung there. Nor does long our smallDurance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep,Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: allLife death does end and each day dies with sleep.

About the author

My primary research interest is and always has been advancing knowledge of how hominids became human. Modern humans exploded out of Africa between about 40 and 50 kyr ago, and there is abundant evidence of recognizably human behaviour from at least that time in Africa, and across Europe, Asia and Australia. Signature modern human behaviour has not been documented unequivocally for the Neanderthals and their contemporaries, the skeletally modern members of the genus Homo (e.g. at Skhul Cave). Instead of recognizably modern implements and other hallmarks of modern human behaviour, in the Middle Palaeolithic we see lithic technology organized around flakes, obtained through bifacial reduction, some platform preparation, and retouch; no unequivocal use of bone other than as an analogue for stone; no evidence of space use that could be recognized as human; no unequivocal evidence of purposeful burial, no unequivocal representational imagery. Achievements include a BA in Archaeology (Simon Fraser University, 1987), “Grave Shortcomings: The Evidence for Neandertal Burial” (Current Anthropology, 1989), a Ph.D. in Anthropology (University of California at Berkeley, 1994), a lectureship in Archaeology and Palaeoanthropology at the University of New England, NSW, Australia, from 1996 to 1999, “Middle Palaeolithic Burial is Not a Dead Issue: The View from Qafzeh, Saint-Césaire, Kebara, Amud, and Dederiyeh” (Journal of Human Evolution, 1999), and, in aggregate, 27 months of field experience in southern central British Columbia (Salishan), Israel (Middle Palaeolithic), France (Mesolithic), Australia, California’s Coast Range, its Central Valley and Great Basin desert regions.

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